Many modern orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) system proposals include the capability to support frequency-selective resource allocation. During frequency-selective resource allocation the channel bandwidth is divided into several sub-bands, which may be called tiles or resource blocks. Each resource block includes several adjacent OFDM subcarriers and may span multiple OFDM symbol periods. For example, a resource block size that has been considered in the 3gpp long term evolution (LTE) standardization effort is 12 adjacent subcarriers by 14 OFDM symbol periods. The use of resource blocks enables data allocation to a particular user to be made on the resource block having the best channel quality.
However, when a high data rate needs to be supported to/from a user, it may be necessary to allocate multiple resource blocks (over frequency) to the user. This results in the difficulty of how to treat the multiple resource block allocation. In one possible approach, the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) could be chosen independently for each of the allocated resource blocks. However, this approach can be inefficient when the set of available modulation coding schemes is limited, because the quality of the best resource block may be much higher than is actually needed for the supporting the highest-rate MCS available in the system. Another possible approach is to utilize a single MCS over all of the allocated resource blocks, where the codeword spans all of the allocated resource blocks to provide frequency diversity. The problem with this approach is that it may results in a lower data rate or throughput than the first approach. Therefore, there is a need for an improved method and apparatus for allocating resources and associated modulation/coding schemes to a user.